


Piece of My Heart

by sweetdreamsaremadeoffish



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, New Year's Eve, New Year's Resolutions, New Years, Sad and Happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22187140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish/pseuds/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish
Summary: Yes, Lilith, I love you. Yes, Lilith, this is your home now. I could never deny you. Yes, Lilith, I want you to stay.
Relationships: Dr. Cerberus/Hilda Spellman, Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Comments: 24
Kudos: 97
Collections: Madam Spellman 2020 Challenge





	1. reclamation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey lovelies! I'm a little late, but I finally figured out how I wanted to do this and thought I'd join in the fray. enjoy!

Lilith may have saved them, may have returned Mary Wardwell to her rightful state of living, may be the new Queen of Hell, but Sabrina refused to trust her by obligation. And thought, opinion spilling over her seams, her aunt shouldn’t either.

But Aunt Zee had a revelation one June evening under the stars, that their new Queen ought to walk amongst them. So Lilith joined the maze of cots that had overtaken the living room and laid beside young witches through the dark, quieting their nocturnal terrors with a touch of her hand.

And night after night spent in Zelda’s study, discussing terms of worship, literature, and myth, melted into night after night spent in Zelda’s bedroom.

Aunt Hilda was simply thrilled as Zelda’s seldom smile suddenly bloomed with reckless abandon, shining like a newly wrought sun over their shivering coven, a fresh breath of a summer breeze. She glowed, gentle and warm as the Mabon fires that lit their way through the woods in September, the whole coven dancing with the trees, fairy bells tied ‘round each ankle and stomachs full with the fruits of the harvest. Greendale was still a farming town, after all.

She fawned over Sabrina on her seventeenth birthday, and even kept her promise to let her go bowling with Theo, Roz, and Harvey after a tame family dinner. The first Feast of Beasts went off without a hitch, now a celebration of more sacrifices than Freya’s, honoring familiars and ancestry alike. Zelda wept, unashamed, when her own precious Vinegar Tom came trotting to her feet, very much living. Yule soon bathed the coven in a bounty of food and friendship, with Ambrose and Prudence’s victorious return, twins and the traitor Blackwood in their wake, the latter of which Aunt Hilda roasted cheerfully on a long spit over the parlor fireplace while Lilith clung to her High Priestess like a shadow.

And still Sabrina couldn’t ease her instinct. That Lilith was a dangerous, manipulative creature. That Lilith could not be trusted. Perhaps it was her human half that harbored it though, because no one else seemed to notice.

Breakfast was much less hectic now, something of a routine having been established with a great deal of trial and error. The Great Oatmeal-Milkman Heist—or, as Aunt Zelda called it, the Button Buttocks Incident—came to mind.

But no, now the coven took their meals from an assembly line of sorts and proceeded out into the rest of the house. The dining room, the parlor, the botanical room, all comfortable lounging witches, dishes in hand, soon to be dutifully scrubbed by legions of disciplined spiders. Aunt Hilda often coaxed the more squeamish little ones to help, slowly getting them accustomed to her friendly familiars before introducing the old tarantula Zelda had brought back from safari in the 19th century and released into the attic.

It was an unspoken rule of the house that the kitchen table was set for the Spellman family.

Sabrina swept through the house, greeting everyone with a grin on her way, but once she was leaving as soon as she arrived, grabbing an apple and some toast amid a passing “good morning” to her aunts and cousin, banking with the element of surprise.

No such luck. 

“And where do you think you’re going?” Hilda’s voice dipped, and Zelda’s newspaper dropped with it.

“Indeed, Sabrina, what sort of business are you attending at this hour?”

Sabrina’s feet turned to cement where she stood, and she huffed a long sigh. “I’m just going out to meet some friends. Theo’s decorating for his New Year’s Eve party, and I promised I’d help.”

“With not even enough time to sit and have a bit of breakfast with your family?” Without turning, Sabrina could hear the frown in Aunt Hilda’s voice. She looked to Ambrose for help, but he was searching the depths of his cereal.

“I-”

“It’s alright, Hilda.” Aunt Zelda cut her from her protestations. “She’s just trying to help. The mortal’s year is drawing to a close. They have their own rituals, and they’re no less valuable than ours. Sabrina, you may go.”

Her niece stared. Who had Aunt Zelda become?

“Oh, wait, speaking of mortal rituals, before you’re off,” Hilda chirped, perking up. “Cee’s invited all of us to the shop tonight to celebrate and tune in to the New Year’s ball drop in the city. I know he’d love to see you, Sabrina.”

Sabrina smiled, but before she could respond, Zelda butted in.

“Pardon me, sister, but you can’t expect _us_ to attend. Sabrina’s one thing but- Our new year doesn’t begin for another month, what on the serpent’s tongue would you have us celebrate?”

Hilda tutted, some younger children trickling in with speedily cleaned plates. “The same things mortals do, Zelds. Letting go of the past, change, new beginnings. Everything good from the old year, and everything that’ll be better in the new.”

Zelda scowled, disappearing behind her paper.

“Oh, just think about it. Ambrose, too. Sabrina, can I count on you, love?”

Sabrina was already headed for the door, bag slung over her shoulder. “Sure, Aunt Hilda, we’ll swing by.”

Hilda sing-songed a light, “Thank you!”

“Bye!” The door slammed behind her.

Twin bassinets and twin babes filled the space where Hilda’s bed had been. Zelda came up to check on them once she’d finished her breakfast and morning rounds. Damnedly, they were much quieter than Sabrina had ever been, even after her infancy. Lilith was so gracious with them, with Zelda’s protectiveness, even admiring the fragile sincerity of her maternal nature.

“Of course,” she’d said when Zelda thanked her, stretched on her stomach across the bed, wider now to accommodate two witches. “I never had that, how could I deny them? Or you?”

That smirk begged another sure answer to the demoness’ constant question, and Zelda turned from fussing over the twins, bending to kiss her Queen’s scarlet mouth, safe and soundly. 

_Yes, Lilith, I love you. Yes, Lilith, this is your home now. Yes, Lilith, I could never deny you either. Yes, Lilith, I want you to stay._

“What do you mean?” Zelda busied herself with the babes again, knowing somehow already Lilith’s story would tear through her like cloth and earth.

“I was never this way with my children.” She corrected herself. “My monsters.” She propped her chin up in her hands, and Zelda found the sight bizarre, like she was a bubblegum teenage girl sleeping over from one of Hilda’s more cloying flicks, bare toes pointed into the air. Alone together was when Lilith was youngest. “You’re so tender with them. I sometimes envy you that.”

Zelda tucked the twins into their blankets and came to sit beside her, one hand carding absently through her curls, Lilith following the sweep of her fingers like the drifting snow outside followed the wind.

And now, Letty and Judas held to her breast, Zelda breathed a gust of aching at the innocence of their black diamond eyes. Maybe it was how all infants looked at all their keepers, their caretakers. Or maybe, they knew she was their new beginning. And they were hers.

Between those eyes and the year’s last sunset over inky woods, Zelda found herself at Hilda’s hell-forsaken book shop, white-knuckled on a mug of eggnog in a back corner booth, looking on as what seemed to be half of Greendale stumbled into indecent inebriation. Honestly, there were plenty of new years, even new decades to be had, and no need for such indignity every time the earth rounded the sun.

The party raged around her, lit in cheap 1980s neon and sharp pop. Dr. Cerberus presided over everything at the bar rather than behind, Hilda giggling with champagne beside him. Ambrose and the Weird Sisters had disappeared into the bookshelves at least an hour ago, while Harvey, Rosalind, and Theo spun at the center of it all, the bodies parting for their laughter and tightly joined hands.

“Aunt Zelda?” Her lungs stuttered and a steadying hand flew to her chest.

“Sabrina,” she choked, standing with a cough to meet her niece’s hesitant frame.

The girl bit her lip, and Zelda noticed she was holding something behind her. A quick shift of her eyes tugged at some instinct of Zelda’s, sending her to pray for patience in managing whatever potentially perilous tomfoolery Sabrina had begun.

Sabrina, for her part, took a moment to gather her will and revealed an old shoebox from its sorely obvious hiding place. Exposed, torn cardboard was glamoured with a primly tied red ribbon, and Zelda recognized the box from Sabrina’s middle school years, the time her niece had campaigned for a pair of the most popular shoes among the youth at the time and promptly ruined them trying to fish in Sweetwater River. Something about weak material that left her soleless on her long, muddy walk home.

“I’ve been thinking about what Aunt Hilda said this morning. About letting go of the past, releasing the old for the new. And I… I just, I thought it would be better to start the new year with a clean slate, no, like, grudges or anything, y’know? So, um. Here.” Sabrina shoved the box into Zelda’s hands. “Happy New Year, Aunt Zee.”

Lilith appeared at Zelda’s shoulder, all glittering glory in her black sequined jumpsuit, nothing to catch on her edges.

“Are you alright, love?” She spoke low in Zelda’s ear, bright with concern at her lover’s clouded expression, one ice blue eye lingering on Sabrina.

Zelda nodded, brushing grounding fingertips along her forearm, tracing the bone of Lilith’s delicate wrist under her thumb. “I think so. Yes.”

Lilith eased, wrapping her arms around Zelda’s waist, chin cool against her neck with a whisper. “Well? Aren’t you going to open it?”

Gingerly, uncharacteristically so, Zelda slipped the ribbon from its bow and lifted the shoebox’s lid. Inside, nestled in mismatched tissue paper and the scent of old rubber, there was a slender, curved… thing. Zelda laid it across her palm, examining the sleek arc of ivory.

“Sabrina, I don’t understand. What is this meant to be?”

“It’s-”

The sweet weight of Lilith’s embrace was gone, and Zelda missed Sabrina’s answer glancing around the loud lavender shop for any sign of her whereabouts.

“Sorry, dear, what is it?” Zelda repeated cursorily.

“It’s a rib, Aunt Zee.”

Noise no longer reached her, everything whistling to a silent peak until it was only Zelda, only Zelda and the bone in her hands and the store’s bell clanging empty against the doorway as her love flew blind into the last night. And Sabrina’s half-explanation an echoing gunshot inside her head.

“Lilith’s rib.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof, am I right? ❤️  
> I'll be finishing up chapter two tonight, so let me know what you think!


	2. resolution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not when I said it would appear and not entirely perfect, but can be nicely paired with Florence + the Machine’s “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” and/or Billy Joel’s “Goodnight My Angel” nonetheless.
> 
> And yes, i am making fun of the fact that the witches of caos apparently can’t perform their craft with their clothes on.

Rabbit heart leaping in her chest, she lost her shoes somewhere in the woods and ran her feet raw. Towering timbers bowed to her tunneled vision, the world closing in, collapsing around her. Dizzy-still, hot and cold, she stumbled, flooded and empty all at once. A wash of smoke trickled down from the sky, snow floating down like ash to burn her breathless.

The pounding of fear in her veins, blinding panic sent her blazing to her grave destination. Because of course she would break to him in any instance of insecurity. When Blackwood erected his own likeness in the Academy’s great hall, his men abandoned Lucifer’s in the wilds, but Lilith was bound to him of old and followed the map of her scars to his overgrown effigy, landing at his statued cloven feet.

No. _No_. Not again. She was already unraveling, that shiv of her pulse-warmed to waking and reminded to ache, her strings thready and splitting with the strain of sharing. Overturned, Lilith scrambled to bolt down her agency.

Nails drawing from wells of blood, she clawed at herself through her clothes, tearing fabric and armor alike, knee-deep in sleet and loathful punishment for her foolish purity.

Somewhere, nearer than she could bear, Lilith felt that severed shard twist in a traitorous fist. She wondered briefly if returning home collared and cuffed was better than never knowing another.

Then her spine rattled, jarred beyond her control, a snake under her skin, and she shivered outside the winter with the shedding of her shell. No more could she place such power in love’s hands. No more could she give of herself so, not now that she knew the steep consequences from a fragment of a tethered soul.

“Lilith?!” A cry came calling through her temple of trees.

And she wept. Because it was Zelda’s voice. Because Zelda came after her. Because where there once was safety, she walked on a brittle freezing of love.

“Lilith?” The gash of horror in Zelda’s tone bruised her better than any hands, and she squeezed her eyes shut, whimpering guarding charms into the dirt even as Zelda’s heels crunched the fresh-fallen snow close.

“Shh, Lilith, it’s alright.” Zelda reached out, soothing spells at her fingertips, to touch Lilith’s hunched back. But the demon queen wrenched away, missing things lancing through her, and screamed with howls of hellfire, indigo flame roaring up from the earth to melt a protective circle.

Still her intention was weak, weak for Zelda in every way that terrified her. She couldn’t push the witch away with a mind only for adoration, and Zelda stepped through the dwindling embers fearless, a prophet tending her god in a tangle of tenderness.

Zelda was gentle, gathering Lilith’s wracked frame to her, head laid heavy in her lap. She whisked tears aside and leaned over to peel back decimated cloth, kissing wounds away tranquil as April showers. Lilith drowned herself against Zelda’s thigh and the silk of her skirt amidst the veil she cast across the snow, a sapphire halo.

“Now,” Zelda sighed, wound down to whispers in calming her lover’s crooked body. “Let’s mend this, shall we?” Lilith kept her eyes tight even as she nodded and nestled into Zelda’s plush hip.

Zelda hummed Lilith’s favorite lullaby, vanishing tattered clothing piece by piece until she was stripped to skin, blessings on the witch’s hands with each fleeting caress. Lilith huddled to her, too exposed, too embarrassed, too alone, too alive. Knowing, always knowing, the high priestess’ body became bare velvet beneath her, and Zelda was ready to begin. She raised Lilith’s rib to the starlight and spoke soft incantations of flesh and muscle and marrow.

“ _Wait_.” Lilith caught her, open at all angles all of a sudden. “Stop.”

Worry shot through Zelda like lightning. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Lilith sat up, swollen with sobs and sincerity as she took the gift back. Demurely fashioning a slender chain and cringing as she drove it into either end with a delicate groan, Zelda flighty with anxious care. Silver glittered in her unfurled palms, the moon watching over them while Zelda lifted golden curls and let Lilith fasten the clasp round her neck, questions in her eyes finding no answers in the demoness’ watery smile. When it rested against Zelda’s breast, Lilith was struck by how easily it fit there, swept into the sculpture of her priestess’ decolletage, and she wanted to break all over again.

She wrestled it down save for a hairpin crack slipping along her cheek and settled closer with arms around her.

“I want you to keep it.” Lilith brushed a thumb over her own edges.

Zelda cupped her chin, both hands, all heart. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Lilith murmured. “I… I trust you. And I want you to have it. As a token of my promise to you. My promise to keep… trying, to keep loving you, and trusting you to love me.” She nodded, nuzzling Zelda’s nose. “And I know you’d never hurt me.”

Zelda couldn’t breathe.

But she glowed, in the moon and the snow, in the light of her faith and her god’s sparkling tears, and she kissed Lilith until she could feel it in her bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler: the kiss happens at midnight (bc i’m a softie) but they don’t hear the fireworks ringing in the new year (bc they’re softies)
> 
> I hoped you liked ittttttttt!  
> Love, Ruby


End file.
